Earthly Astonishments Read online

  Nelly squeezed Josephine’s hand before she backed into the main room and disappeared.

  The light was dim. The man leaned closer. He smelled clean, like soap, not rank and sweaty the way the coal merchant always did.

  “Please, do me the honor.” He offered his hand, which could have held six her size. He had promised food. It seemed worth the risk. The woman, Nelly, was still nearby. Josephine let him lead her to a table. He removed his coat and rolled it into a cushion for her chair.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. He was like a knight, performing an act of chivalry! “Thank you very much,” she said more loudly.

  “Allow me to introduce myself…” The man had a voice like honey! “My name is Randolph James Walters, known to most as R. J. Walters. You have no doubt heard of me?”

  Josephine shook her head, then wondered if she should have professed otherwise.

  “Well, now that has changed. And you would be?”

  She hesitated. Was there any reason not to say the truth?

  “Josephine. Just Josephine.”

  “Well, then, Just Josephine,” he said with a wink, “are you on your own? Lost, perhaps, in the big city?”

  She tipped her chin to pretend confidence. “I am alone, but I’m older than I look,” she assured him. “I’m only here to see a fellow about a stitching job in a factory.”

  “Indeed!” He smiled again.

  Nelly appeared, carrying a towel on a tray. Mr. Walters took it and handed it to Josephine.

  “You’ll want to clean up a little, my dear, before I get your supper.”

  Josephine felt a flush of true gratitude as she pressed the warm, damp cloth against her face and then wiped her dirty hands, leaving streaks of filth on the towel.

  “I may be able to help you, my dear.” Mr. R. J. Walters was speaking now in an undertone. “I’ve been looking for someone like you.”

  What could he mean? Josephine’s neck prickled.

  “Someone who might change my fortune,” continued Mr. Walters. “I suspect that we can help each other.”

  “But what—”

  “You’re tired now. Tomorrow we’ll talk. I will arrange for you to go home with Nelly tonight. Would that be suitable? In the meantime, let me see to your supper.”

  He rose and headed to the bar. Nelly was at her ear in an instant.

  “Is everything all right, Missy?”

  “Oh, thank you, Nelly, yes. Who is that man? He’s so, so, like a gentleman in a book! He said he’d been looking for someone just like me! That I might change his fortune.”

  “Ah, did he now?” Nelly finished wiping the table and used the same cloth to wipe her own forehead. “Aye, and he might well believe that to be true.”

  “Do you think so, Nelly? Because I don’t want to let anyone down, or make a mistake.”

  Nelly’s eyes were somehow looking beyond the walls of the dark and smoky room. Then she flashed a smile at Josephine, one that made her tired face seem merry for a moment. She hooked her fingers in the glass beer mugs on the next table and was gone.

  Josephine watched Mr. R. J. Walters cross the room, holding a plate of fried potatoes with bacon. He put her supper on the table and tucked his handkerchief around her neck before offering the fork.

  osephine might have consumed a pipe herself for all the smoke she tasted while waiting for Nelly to finish her shift at the Half-Dollar Saloon.

  At the end of it, Mr. Walters insisted on carrying her out. “She can weigh no more than a couple of chickens.”

  In a wink, Josephine found herself astride the man’s shoulders, her fingers clenching the folds of his coat. He must be rich indeed to wear so thick and soft a garment! Her poor worn dress was like tissue paper in comparison.

  Nelly lived on Forsyth Street, only a short distance away from the Half-Dollar Saloon. The house was one of those tall, grim buildings that paid no attention to comfort.

  “Can you do no better than this, Nelly O’Dooley?” Mr. Walters complained. His polished boots were picking their way up rubbish-strewn steps. Josephine wondered the same thing. Was Nelly so poor?

  “That’d be up to you, now wouldn’t it, Mr. R. J. Walters?” Nelly asked gruffly. There was no answer.

  “I’ll not venture inside.” Mr. Walters swung Josephine to the ground. “Sleep well, my dear. Have pleasant dreams.”

  He turned to Nelly.

  “Bring her into the museum in the morning,” he said. “We’ll settle everything then.”

  Museum? Did he work in the museum uptown? With the dinosaur bones? Mr. Walters went down the street, adjusting his shiny top hat. Nelly sniffed at his retreating back and put a hand on Josephine’s cheek.

  “Well, you’ll be needing to sleep for a week to get your strength up for what’s ahead on your road. Come along in.”

  Josephine followed Nelly into the tenement. Something brushed past her leg in the dark. She caught her breath and wished right away that she hadn’t. The stench in the hallway was that powerful. Someone had cooked cabbage, maybe a hundred times, but that was the kindest odor. There must be cats who lived here and a privy close by.

  She didn’t like to put her hands down where she couldn’t see what they were touching, but Josephine needed help climbing the three flights of narrow stairs. Nelly paused at the top.

  “Now, tread quietly through this door. My boy Charley and I have got the back room, but the Wong family live in the front. And there’s no light, none at all, until I can get to the candle on our table, so hang on to my skirt and step light.”

  Josephine did as she was told, trying not to breathe. As warned, there was nothing but blackness. She shuffled along next to Nelly’s skirt, which smelled of cigars and beer. In the first room, she could hear someone snoring and a child’s cough. How peculiar to be tiptoeing past a stranger’s sleep like this.

  Through a curtained doorway, they came to a stop. She could hear Nelly fiddling. The match was struck, and the candle lit. Without warning, a pale face rose from the darkness beyond. Josephine cried out before she could stop herself. The boy had white hair and pink eyes.

  “Mercy, Charley! You’ll send us into fits, popping up like a ghost. What are you doing awake anyway?” Nelly tousled the boy’s startling hair.

  “You skeered my guts through a hole,” said Charley, his voice croaking before he laughed.

  He was near as tall as his mother, but white as a bleached bone and skinny, as Josephine could all too plainly see. He was naked from the waist up, and his shoulder blades stuck out like budding wings.

  “Put a shirt on, son. We’ve got company.”

  “But it’s hot as the devil’s own oven in here.”

  Nelly pulled a shirt down from a nail on the wall and handed it to him. Charley slipped his arms into the sleeves, squinting his alarming eyes at Josephine. The candlelight seemed to make his pupils dance, not letting her stare him down.

  “So, Nelly, who’ve you got here?”

  “This is—why, Missy! I don’t even know your name.”

  “I’m Josephine.”

  “Josephine, this is my son, Charley O’Dooley. I can see the two of you have plenty to be googly-eyed about. Charley is an albino. That means born with no color in his skin or his hair or even his eyes. But there’s plenty of color in his language, thank you very much.”

  Charley grinned, giving himself dimples and transforming his unearthly face into that of a rascal.

  “And from the looks of things, you’re a midget, eh, Josephine? Which is why Mr. R. J. Walters was so on fire to be friendly this evening.”

  This news shook the smile off Charley’s face and tied a thick knot in Josephine’s stomach.

  “What do you mean, Nelly? He seemed, he was, he said…” Her voice trailed away. Nelly was folding her lips to the inside and Charley was picking at a button thread with too much interest.

  “It’s late, Missy, we should be getting you settled, not all worried up. You’ll have plenty of time to see things for yo
urself in the morning. And if it makes ye feel any better, Charley here works for Mr. Walters too.”

  “Yeah, and I bring home more money than she does!” added Charley, with an affectionate look at his mother. “But not enough to buy us a palace yet, eh, Mumsy?”

  Nelly rubbed his cheek. “Someday, Charley. Someday. Now then, Josephine, we don’t have a bed for ye, but I can see from the droop of your eyes that a blanket in the corner will be enough for tonight.”

  Finally settled, Josephine lay in her appointed corner with her head spinning. The day’s hot air was trapped in the room. She needed the blanket more for under than over. How much had happened since she stood in the headmistress’s study, planning her escape! She thought of Emmy and the coins in Miss MacLaren’s stocking and the cook’s face in the morning when Josephine would be noticed missing. She thought of the bootblack boys, curled in their doorway. She tried not to wonder what Mr. R. J. Walters was planning for her.

  She listened in the dark to the breathing so close by, trying to distinguish whose was whose. How lucky she was to meet Nelly! Then she realized, as she faded into sleep, that as odd as they might be to the rest of the world, she and Charley were two of a kind.

  he crimson banner over the arched doorway the Bouwerie was lettered in gold:

  R. J. WALTERS’ MUSEUM OF

  EARTHLY ASTONISHMENTS

  Josephine’s oversized boots dragged to a stop so that she could look at the colorful posters nailed to the pillars in the shadow of the elevated railway tracks.

  ROSA, THE LADY WITH A BEARD

  AS LONG AS SAINT NICHOLAS!

  HALF MAN, HALF ALLIGATOR!

  SEE FOR YOURSELF!

  “That’s me,” said Charley, hooking his thumb at the painted likeness of a chalk-faced ghoul. “‘Charles, the Albino Boy! A Ghostly Phenomenon!’ Bleeding lovely, aren’t I?”

  Josephine stared from the boy to the picture and back again. This is how Charley worked for Mr. Walters? Her shoulders went cold.

  The boy leaned so close that his floppy, white hair tickled her cheek. “Don’t look so queasy. It’s better than flogging buns or newspapers like every other lunkhead, getting your feet wet all the day long.” He put his hands on Josephine’s shoulders and peered at her with his darting pink eyes. “You’ll do fine, little one. Think of it as being in the theater. That’s what I do.”

  “You run along now, Charley. Get yourself to work. Mr. Walters’ll be in a fine pucker if you’re late again.”

  Charley ducked his mother’s kiss and then saluted as he ran inside.

  “That’s where the staff and the paying customers go in,” Nelly explained. “His Nibs is the next door over. Oh, and Missy? Be sure to find out the fee he’s got in that greedy mind of his. You’re worth twice times, or more, whatever he says.”

  Without another word, she escorted Josephine all the way to the center diamond in Mr. Walters’s office carpet. Mr. Walters bounced to his feet when they came in and rubbed his palms together.

  “Did we sleep well?” He bent over Josephine to ask, as if the mood of the day depended on her answer.

  “If she’s staying on with us, she’ll be needing a mat, sir.” Nelly was quick to the point.

  “We’ll all be moving to the summer quarters in Coney Island on Saturday. I’m sure a bed will be found at the boarding house. It is nicer for all of us to be out of the city for a few weeks. Thank you, Nelly, for bringing her in this morning. You can wait in the main hall.”

  Josephine lifted her head with a jerk. “I want Nelly here,” she said quietly.

  “Indeed?” Mr. Walters swallowed that like a sour cherry. His eyes narrowed, and he sat down on a wooden chair to look at her.

  “I would like you to join our little family, Josephine,” he said quietly. “But first we need to know a few important statistics.”

  He stood up and produced a folding measuring stick seemingly from nowhere.

  “With your permission?”

  She could feel her lips tightening as she held back squawks of anger. Should she let him? Could she stop him? Should she kick him? He held the stick against her back. She could feel the warmth of his large hand as it rested for a moment on her head.

  Mr. Walters made a little noise in his throat, like a bumblebee deep inside a daffodil. Josephine caught a look from Nelly’s eyes that made her sharpen up.

  Maybe she should wait to see what he offered?

  “Just as I thought!” He exclaimed, his smile nearly as wide as his moustache. “Under twenty-nine inches! Well under twenty-nine inches!” He beamed at Josephine, as if expecting her to marvel with him.

  “How old are you, my dear?”

  “Twelve last October.”

  “Twelve? Hmmm. Perhaps we could say fourteen? Or fifteen? To make it even more, even more…” He patted his pockets and then riffled papers on his desk until he’d found a small notebook and a pencil. He began muttering to himself and making notes.

  “New clothes, of course, right away, first thing, and shoes! Do those clodhoppers fit, my dear? No, I didn’t think so. Take them off, let me see your feet.”

  Josephine’s cheeks were burning and her hands were like ice as she yanked at the knotted laces. If nothing else good comes of this, she thought, at least I’ll get a pair of real shoes, fitted to my own feet and not stuffed in the toes with crumples of paper.

  Mr. Walters crouched next to her, like a giant bear. He seemed hardly able to wait for her bare toes to emerge, as if he would eat them up and lick his lips after.

  “Your feet are four inches long! Four inches! I am delighted, my dear, simply delighted!”

  Nelly’s eyebrows were raised, maybe laughing to see this huge man in his fancy suit down on the floor. Josephine’s shame suddenly floated away, and she felt a burst of hope inside. She had something that Mr. Walters wanted, and Mr. Walters was a rich man. She was good at arithmetic. She could make up any sum she wanted.

  “I am prepared to offer you room and board, and new dresses, plus ten dollars a year, in exchange for your services in our museum,” stated Mr. Walters, his voice steady and warm, as if promising the moon. “What do you say to that, my dear?”

  Josephine could hear the clock ticking with a steady, hollow click. Tick, tock. Must talk. Tick, tock. Must talk.

  Having learned the carpet pattern by heart, she lifted her chin to face him.

  “Mr. Walters.” It came out in a whisper. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Mr. Walters. When I saw those pictures out front, I was ready to skedaddle straight to the stitching factory. Then I remembered you bought me my supper, and Charley said it wasn’t so bad here anyway. So I thought it wouldn’t hurt to hear what you had in mind.

  “But I’ll need more than what you’re saying.” Josephine didn’t know where her courage was coming from. Maybe from Nelly’s soft smile over in the corner.

  “First of all, I want to be where no one can touch me. Up somehow, so they can look, but no touching.”

  Mr. Walters smiled. “Of course, my dear, I can understand that. You shall have a platform, all your own.”

  Josephine raced ahead before she could succumb to the jitters. “And I want two gold dollars every single week I stay with you, and I want it paid on Saturday night, not saved up for someday later on. Every week.”

  Mr. Walters jumped back to his feet. Josephine could see Nelly’s jaw roll open and knew she’d overstepped it.

  It was amazing how a voice could change from honey to grit in the wink of an eye. Mr. Walters began spitting his words, as if they were bits of stone.

  “Perhaps you have forgotten that you are a gutterpup. Do you think life for a freak in a garment factory will be a merry one?”

  Josephine’s heart plunged to her four-inch feet.

  “I am taking a tremendous risk,” Mr. Walters continued, “by investing in you at all. What if you start to grow? What then?”

  Josephine’s eyes stung, her tears making a sneak attack. She looked at Nelly, feelin
g hopeless. Nelly winked. That was all Josephine needed.

  “I don’t think I’ve got any more growing to do, sir. But I suppose you can’t be sure of that, not knowing me. I guess I’m pretty small, anyhow, even if I did grow a little. Mr. Barnum, who’s got the new circus? He might think I’m small enough, being under twenty-nine inches and all. I might try going to him before I go to a stitching factory.” She stopped talking and listened to the clock.

  Mr. Walters clasped his hands and bowed his head, as if in prayer.

  “Josephine,” he said finally, “I will accept your conditions.”

  Josephine pinched herself to stop from laughing.

  “If you start to grow, our arrangement is over. Is that understood? You are a tough little thing, but it adds to your charm. I foresee a prosperous partnership between us.” He turned to Nelly.

  “Nelly? I can trust you to clean her up for tomorrow? She’s a bit ripe.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  But Josephine wasn’t quite finished. “Mr. Walters? Because Nelly found me and will be looking out for me, she gets a half-dollar extra every week.

  “Those are my rules. You can say yes or no.”

  ext morning, when Nelly suggested a scrubbing, Josephine wasn’t quite sure what she meant. Why, she’d washed her face and hands the night before last in the Half-Dollar Saloon. Surely that had taken care of things for a while?

  “No, Missy, I mean your whole body, and your hair.”

  “My hair too?”

  “Aye, your hair too. Charley, my boy, you start filling pots from the tap. We’ll have her scrubbed and polished in no time.”

  Charley scowled, but he took two cooking pots and went off down the hall to the tap, shared by the O’Dooleys with the Wongs and the Flanigans and the Goldsmiths. Nelly unhitched a washtub from a hook on the ceiling and set it on the floor next to the table.

  “Couldn’t we just rinse me off with a cloth?”